As the Baltimore City Council moves to deter attacks on gays and lesbians through a local hate-crimes law, a state delegate who sponsored Maryland's hate-crimes statute wants to expand the law to include sexual orientation.State law covers racial and ethnically based hate crimes.Del. Samuel I. Rosenberg, a Baltimore Democrat, said he is drafting a bill to be introduced in the General Assembly in January to amend the state law in the wake of Matthew Shepard's killing Oct. 12 in Laramie, Wyo. The university student, 21, was killed in part because he was gay.Since last week's incident, gays and lesbians across the country have been calling on local, state and federal lawmakers to draft measures to help deter attacks on people because of their sexual orientation.

A total of 7,164 people were the victim of a reported hate crime across the country in 2012, with 19.2 percent of them targeted because of their sexual orientation, according to new data released by the FBI on Monday . The numbers show a decline compared to 2011, when 7,713 victims were reported targeted, 20.4 percent because of their sexual orientation. In 2012, 1,376 victims were targeted for their sexual orientation. Of the offenses, 53.9 percent were based on "anti-male homosexual" bias, 28.6 percent on a general "anti-homosexual" bias, 12.7 percent on an "anti-female homosexual" bias, 3 percent on an "anti-bisexual" bias, and 1.9 percent on an "anti-heterosexual" bias.

WASHINGTON -- Democrats urged Congress yesterday to approve new protections for gays and lesbians by expanding federal laws that provide harsher penalties for crimes motivated by race, religion or national origin.Advocates of gay rights and other supporters of expanding the hate crimes legislation to cover sexual orientation, disability or gender were outraged to discover last week that Republicans had deleted the provision from a spending bill funding the Commerce, Justice and State departments.

Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts offered an open hand to the LGBT community at a hate-crime forum in Mount Vernon on Thursday night, saying he wants to stand "shoulder-to-shoulder" with community members to improve officers' interactions with them on the ground. "We're here to be open, we're here to engage, we're here to be part of the community -- all parts of the community," Batts said. The event, held at the Waxter Center as part of this week's Baltimore Black Pride celebration, drew a small crowd -- organizers said the rain probably kept some away -- but had a large presence from the police department, with the department's top brass heavily represented.

Police Department officials announced increased surveillance and patrols for forthcoming religious holidays in a community heavily populated by Jewish families after last week's incidents of vandalism, which police are treating as hate crimes. At a meeting at the Jewish Community Center on Park Heights Avenue on Thursday night, Maj. Sabrina Tapp-Harper of the Northwestern District told residents that the vandalism is considered "a very serious matter" and that a new patrol van will survey the targeted neighborhoods from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. to "apprehend the individuals that may have committed these acts.

Politicians are often accused of being irrelevant. But rarely has a group of them been so intent on proving that charge than the senators who voted last week for the "Matthew Shepard Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007." This bill is supposed to be a brave and pioneering piece of legislation. According to the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights organization, "Congress has taken a historic step forward and moved our country closer to the realization that all Americans, including the GLBT [gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender]

An excerpt of a Chicago Tribune editorial that was published yesterdayAn excerpt of a Chicago Tribune editorial that was published yesterday: MATTHEW Shepard, a 105-pound, 5-foot 2-inch, soft-spoken wisp of a kid, couldn't have been much of a threat to anyone. Yet he had been assaulted twice in recent months and last week he was pistol-whipped, strung up spread-eagle against a fence on the outskirts of Laramie, Wyo. He died five days later.It's an inconceivable crime that yet cries out for an explanation.

The FBI has joined a local police probe of hate crimes in the Annapolis area, and its agents already have begun interviewing potential suspects and witnesses in the area, FBI Special Agent John Huntley said yesterday.Annapolis city police alerted the FBI to the case Monday after vandals spray-painted swastikas and anti-Semitic slurs on the walls and doors of the Kneseth Israel Synagogue over the weekend."We'll go wherever the evidence goes," said Mr. Huntley, supervisor of the Annapolis office.

By John W. Frece and John W. Frece,Annapolis Bureau of The Sun | March 22, 1991

ANNAPOLIS -- The House of Delegates passed two civil rights measures yesterday involving housing discrimination and religious and ethnic crimes, but killed by a single vote a third bill that would have required police to gather data on "hate crimes" against homosexuals."

The president of the Anne Arundel County chapter of the NAACP heralded a new era of open communications between county officials and African-American communities after meeting yesterday with County Executive Janet S. Owens. "I always felt that [county officials] had that [anti-hate crimes] posture," said Gerald G. Stansbury, president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "But there lacked communication between the county and the community.

Days after a jury acquitted George Zimmerman of second-degree murder and manslaughter in the shooting of Florida teen Trayvon Martin, a coalition of LGBT rights groups has issued an open letter declaring "solidarity" with Martin's family and friends. Led by the National Black Justice Coalition and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 35 national LGBT advocacy groups signed on for a letter saying they plan to "honor Trayvon Martin by strengthening our commitment to end bias, hatred, profiling and violence across our communities.

A 25-year-old Northeast Baltimore man convicted two years ago for vandalizing a synagogue, has been charged with attemped murder after police said he attacked two men with knives in the Upper Fells Point area, severely injuring one of them. Ian Baron. who was arrested and charged on Wednesday, has been in trouble before. In 2010, the Latino-born, Jewish-raised man was charged with causing $25,000 worth of damage to a Jewish temple in his hometown of Olney, Md. He had neo-Nazi tattoos, lived in a shack with "Whites Only!"

As the punches kept coming, landing across his face and head, Kenni Shaw tried to talk to his five attackers but couldn't get the words out. "I was pinned down by punches," Shaw said of the beating he received Christmas night, outside the East Baltimore liquor store he frequents near his home. "It was so hard that I felt my lip and side face swell up immediately. I was trying to talk to these guys, but they weren't letting me talk. " Instead, they were intent on beating him - simply out of hate, said Shaw, a 30-year-old gay man. "I was just beaten in my face.

Can someone explain to me why the beating of a white man outside Courthouse East by a group of black men is not a hate crime? ("Bealefeld: Downtown beating caught on tape not a hate crime," April 10.) If the victim was black and beaten at the hands of a gang of whites, Al Sharpton would be on Pratt Street within hours. The double standard is driving a permanent wedge into race relations, and the media only feeds on the story of the poor victimized African-American. We still don't know the facts in the Trayvon Martin case, but we should never let the facts get in the way of a good protest.

Baltimore's top cop warned Tuesday against "race-baiting" amid rising tensions across the nation, citing the Trayvon Martin case and cautioning that a video generating outrage on the Internet of a tourist being beaten and stripped in downtown Baltimore does not appear to depict a hate crime. Police CommissionerFrederick H. Bealefeld III, appearing on WBAL's "The C4 Show," said the attack on a 31-year-old white man from Arlington, Va., appears to be nothing beyond "drunken opportunistic criminality.

The New Year's Day blaze that damaged a Brooklyn Park house and was accompanied by racial and sexual slurs painted on the home's exterior was arson, according to the Anne Arundel County fire department. The fire, in the 300 block of Church St., displaced two white women — one elderly and one disabled — and their caregiver, Korrey Tubaya, who is African American. Tubaya said Tuesday that this was the second incident in which he believes he was the target. In September, his car was severely damaged, and racial slurs were scratched into it. Police said that incident remains under investigation, and they are working with the Fire Department on the investigation of the home arson.

A recent series of hate crimes in Annapolis has exposed a side of this historic city that rarely makes the glossy guidebooks or the guided tour: its complicated and sometimes troubled legacy of race relations."

Lt. William Johnston calls it the "Same" Theory, and he applies it when investigating hate incidents for the Boston Police Department.The lieutenant asks himself: "Could this have happened if everyone involved was the same?" If everyone were black or white, or Christians or Jews, or gay or straight, would the incident have occurred?If the answer is yes, the commander of Boston's Community Disorders Unit suggested yesterday, a police officer probably shouldn't regard the event as a hate incident.

A fire accompanied by racial graffiti at a Brooklyn Park home early New Year's Day is being investigated as a possible hate crime, according to Anne Arundel County police and fire officials. Fire Department Lt. Cliff Kooser said the blaze at the house in the 300 block of Church Street caused an estimated $75,000 in damage, and that "it's a possibility it could be incendiary. " Kooser and police spokesman Justin Mulcahy said the graffiti was on walls and the agencies were working together to determine if it was a hate crime.